


Life at the Crystal Cliffs

by orphan_account



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mental Institution, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-16
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-07-24 09:54:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 8,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7503861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Crystal Cliffs Treatment Center, located in scenic Beach City, Delmarva, is a surprisingly boring place. As long as you ignore the resident sociopath's mind games, Ms. Lazuli's dogged fight against the medical system and her own mind, Pearl's struggling with everything from OCD to her thoroughly illicit crush on her therapist, and a host of other things.</p><p>Well, everyone's here for a reason, after all.</p><p>(I am drawing heavily from my experience with the mental health system, treatment centers, and long-term hospitalization for this, and for the disorders I do not suffer from (which is, of course, many), I have tried my hardest to portray them accurately.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Introductions

Amethyst really didn’t want to be here. She had a life. Friends. Family. Nonetheless, the short woman lay across an oddly comfy but bland sofa in the common room, face contorted into a poison expression. It had been months since The Thing at Garden Canyon, and yet she hadn’t been judged to leave yet. It was all bullshit. She wore the same shirt she’d worn nearly every day at the Crystal Cliffs Treatment Center, just a concert shirt from a club thing a lifetime ago. 

The room was pretty full. She noticed the patients she actually took the time to know doing their own things. Pearl (Her outfit’s bow had been taken away long ago for protocol reasons, so as to prevent any suicide attempts) working on an intricate and repetitive drawing of swirling lines that Amethyst could only barely see. Lapis in a corner, as usual, still as a statue. Jasper, the ever-functional Jasper, dressed in goddamn fatigues, watching  _ Iron Man  _ on the little TV in the common room, having requested this week’s movie.

* * *

Jasper was a sociopath. She wasn’t too bothered by it. Well, technically she had “Antisocial Personality Disorder”, but she preferred “sociopath”. After all, she’d only flipped out on someone once. That broke her cover, and so to seem like she was hoping to deal with her “problem”, she checked into a hospital to try and persuade her victim to avoid pressing charges. It worked, and so now she’d just be here for months, instead of years in jail. 

_ Iron Man _ was a pretty good movie. To be honest, Jasper never really found the whole theme of the movie about arms trading that important, but enjoyed Robert Downey Jr.’s performance. So, she sat on an equally bland chair with a cup of Pepsi from the center cafeteria and just kind of shrugged. Honestly, she was considering just checking into here every so often. You didn’t need to pay rent or work, and all she had to do was hold her inner rage down in the least stressful circumstances possible and accept some limitations. This was great.

* * *

Peridot wasn’t a patient, nor was she in the common room. The short woman instead sat at a large, round desk by the entrance to the wing, in front of a computer. To be fair, it wasn’t as though she was entirely neurotypical. As an adult, though, she’d learnt to value and cope with her autism. It simply was a part of who she was, not a problem anymore. She continued organizing files on the computer and hoped that Dr. Quartz wouldn’t mess up her brilliant system again. Peridot: The Best Staff Member.

Like everything else in her life, Peridot had  _ opinions  _ about the patients under the care of her, Dr. Sapphire, Ruby, and Dr. Quartz. Very strong opinions. Jasper always struck her as…incredibly creepy but generally functional, but she knew that Jasper was here for a reason. Nonetheless, she tried to get Ruby to deal with Jasper during room check and other times that she might be isolated.

Lapis was just…Peridot was here to help people, but honestly, she kind of suspected that Lapis was hopeless, as much as she hated that thought. She had entered the treatment center after attempting to drown herself in the ocean with rocks in the pockets of a long coat in the style of Virginia Woolf. She got pretty close, actually, until a bystander forcibly yanked her from the water and called 911. 

Apparently she’d been off her meds for months, and for someone suffering from rapid-cycling bipolar disorder, that was a very bad thing indeed. Her first two weeks at the treatment center were nothing but explosive outbursts at anyone she saw and attempts at self-harm (Once, she filed down the end of a toothbrush against a windowsill and stabbed herself with it, sending her for a bit to the hospital).

By week five, however, she seemed to have given up, and just refused any kind of treatment. Therapy she’d just stay silent. There was talk of force-feeding her her meds. Worse, the poor woman had gone through trauma after trauma, and that just reacted  _ wonderfully  _ with the bipolar disorder and the lack of medication. Peridot didn’t like to deal with Jasper or Lapis. Thankfully, the other two patients in the wing were far more tolerable. 

Pearl, Peridot could actually sort of relate to. They both were autistic, the difference being that Pearl was also obsessive-compulsive, suffered from what might be Borderline Personality Disorder (Nobody was really sure), and was clearly, clearly in love with her therapist, Rose Quartz. Otherwise, they both were intellectuals with technological interests (though, obviously, Peridot was superior in that regard), and Pearl was generally tolerable to be around. Except when she’d melt down into her self-pity. That could get tedious, but Peridot reminded herself that everyone was here for a reason, and patients should be treated with care and openness.

Then there was Amethyst. People talked about Amethyst’s “intense emotional dysregulation” and the issue that got Steven to ask her to check herself in, but honestly Amethyst had gotten pretty used to the treatment center, in Peridot’s eyes. Sure, she seemed kind of depressed all the time, but when you got to know her, she was awesome. 

Peridot sighed a bit and got back to filing. Just another day at the treatment center.

 


	2. Checking In With Jasper

 

The next day, Jasper lay across her bed, flipping through some comic books (Mostly  _Ms. Marvel, Runaways,_ and  _Batgirl),_ dressed in her usual fatigues. She had, of course, brought some reading material for her stay at the hospital (and later the treatment center), having prepared, but one could only flip through an Army field manual and the first trade paperback of  _Suicide Squad_ so many times before getting bored.

She’d asked Peridot politely if she could borrow some of her comics to read, and for some strange but thoroughly appreciated reason Peridot just happened to hand over most of her own collection. Sure, it was largely crap, but it passed the time. However, she heard the sound of five loud knocks at her door, and stood up. 

Jasper slowly walked up to the door and opened it up, sizing up her enemy. Dr. Quartz entered and took a seat in the room’s chair, pointing at Jasper’s door and her bed. Jasper closed the door and sat down on her bed. “Hey, Quartz.” She tried not to betray her loathing for this woman, and she mostly succeeded.

“Hey, Jasper. So, welcome to your bi-weekly check-in.” Dr. Quartz always opened this way, and that phrase had become a Pavlovian trigger for Jasper. She didn’t show it. “Yeah, so, I’ve been feeling stressed sometimes around Laz- Lapis. I’m starting to worry for my own mental health.” This was technically true. However, the statement had a second, additional intent. It was first and foremost a way to get the attention off of her and onto the absent Lapis, and a method of subtly threatening the other patients through Dr. Quartz while also expressing her legitimate discontent.

“Well, Lapis is going through a lot, Jasper. Would you mind telling me a bit about those feelings of worry? They must not be common for you.” Here, Dr. Quartz parried the first attack, turning the conversation back to Jasper and trying to get her to open up about her feelings a bit more. Admittedly, a sociopath’s feelings are by definition extremely shallow, other than their rage, but Dr. Quartz was a therapist.

“Fine. I worry that Lapis, one day, is going to go after one of us.” A bold-faced lie, and both of them knew it. Jasper sold the lie perfectly, it was just that Dr. Quartz knew that Lapis clearly was in no position to harm herself after her last self-harm attempt, let alone harm anyone else, and since Dr. Quartz knew that Jasper would know it, she deduced that Jasper had lied. However, it was not in her place to confront a patient on a lie without cause, and she decided that she might be able to get something from this out of Jasper.

“Jasper, Lapis is currently in a severe depression. I promise you that she is not a threat right now. Why do you think she’s a threat?” Jasper quickly thought of some false-but-legitimate-sounding reasons. “She’s unstable and manic-depressive. She’s unpredictable and doesn’t follow a moral code.” Both knew that last part to be untrue. Lapis, like most people, had a moral code, it was just that her illness prevented her from following it to the letter, but then again, how many people do follow their moral code to the letter all the time?

“Jasper, you’re a self-described and professionally diagnosed sociopath. You pretty objectively don’t have a moral code. Maybe you could relate to her a bit?” Jasper shook her head a bit. “No. It’s different. I’m predictable, and in the end I’m a very simple person. I have hobbies, I have outlets for my rage, and I have pretty much one emotion to keep tabs on. Lapis is…overly complicated. So, no. Two different forms of the same thing.”

“Are you sure?” Dr. Quartz’s eyes narrowed, though her placid smile remained. “Do you think that you fear the idea of someone being like you? Or at least greatly dislike it? You’ve talked about how you’re always at such an advantage due to your disorder with me and to others. I know that you don’t like Lapis. Is that why?” Back to Jasper. Of course. All as subtext attached to normal therapeutic discussion.

“Look, I just don’t get Lapis. Nothing she does makes any sense. Why stab yourself? Why try and drown yourself? Why feel misery like that? Why completely overestimate your capabilities at everything? Nothing about her makes sense to me. It’s like she’s constantly trying to make the wrong decisions.”

“Jasper, you and Lapis are wired very, very differently, mentally speaking. You have a lot more control over how you think than she does, and once she starts taking her medication she’ll start to be more in control and think more like how you think.” Unlike the half-functional cocktail that Pearl took, Lapis’ medications actually worked. It was a shame that she was on strike as far as taking them went.

“I’m not going to care about her. I can’t care about anyone. I’ll probably understand her better, but I won’t like her.” Rose Quartz smiled a bit more and lay back in the austere chair, responding. “I know, Jasper. How does that make you feel, not being able to care about anyone? I haven’t been able to get a real answer to that question, to be honest.”

Jasper sighed and repeated the same answer she gave to everyone else who asked that question. Due most likely to Hollywood, that was a lot of interested people. “I don’t care. It would just make life more complicated, make my thinking more irrational and weirdly biased, and I just wouldn’t be able to be me.”

Dr. Quartz exhaled. “That’s the answer you always give, Jasper, and you always say it with the same forced conviction. If you tell me how you really feel, your treatment will go a lot smoother, and I might actually be able to help you.” 

Jasper nodded. “Fine. I wonder what it’s like sometimes. Everyone else in the fucking world has emotions, and everyone on TV or in comics does. Except the bad people. A whole lot of bad people think the way I do. I’m supposed to just play the part of a normal person my entire life, and I don’t even know what script I’m supposed to follow. Honestly, I feel like an exile.”

Dr. Quartz thought about this for a second. “I have an associate. We don’t really get along very well, but I might be able to call in a favor. She goes by Y.D. You’ve probably heard of her. She’s also a high-functioning sociopath. Would it be helpful if I asked her to come and meet you here for a chat?” Jasper slowly nodded, her antagonism fading a bit to be replaced with the faintest inkling of hope. “Anyway, I’m afraid that our time is up. See you after suppertime.” She shrugged and left Jasper’s room, the latter woman walking out of the room as well to get some food.


	3. Camp Pining Hearts

Dr. Quartz left Jasper’s room, and in the very beige hallway two women sat, chatting. The first sat in an office chair, on one side of the semicircular front desk. She was blonde, had yellow-tinted glasses, and wore a red name tag on a lanyard reading “PERIDOT” around her neck. The other sat on a stool on the other side of the desk, and happened to be drinking from a soda bottle that Peridot had kindly brought in for her. As long as it was infrequent, and for residents not in immediate danger of self-harm, the senior members of the treatment center staff turned a blind eye to the technical rules infraction. After all, Amethyst had been at CCTC for a while.

“Sup, P-Dot?” Amethyst shrugged, sipping from her soda bottle. Peridot turned her head from the computer screen and looked at Amethyst for half of a second, turning the name “P-Dot” in her head over a few times, before responding. “Oh, you know, the usual. Dr. Quartz can’t keep a filing system straight, Dr. Sapphire keeps leaving slightly passive-aggressive notes for Dr. Quartz in files that the latter wants to access, Ruby keeps texting me things I haven’t read yet, Lapis still is worrying, Pearl is still worrying, for different reasons…” Amethyst tried to make a calming hand gesture, as best as she could, anyway. “Dude, chill. Things are, you know, kinda boring on the resident side. You’ve gotta hear about what’s going on outside the center, though. Steven visited today, and apparently they’re creating a Camp Pining Hearts movie.” She phrased “apparently” as “ap- _ parent- _ ly”, just to exaggerate it a bit without really thinking, and Peridot suddenly stopped focusing on her work at all.

“You’re kidding me. Do we have a cast list out? Or a plot summary? Or a Canadian leak? Or something?” Camp Pining Hearts happened to be one of Peridot’s favorite TV series, for many reasons. Two of which being that it taught her a whole host of interpersonal skills as a child, and it actually encouraged her to try and get to know others, which she eventually learnt to do. Camp Pining Hearts was Peridot’s childhood, honestly. 

“Dude, all we have is an announcement at DelmarvaCon. You should see it. You know, because you have the internet.” Peridot scowled a bit at that. “Amethyst, you and I both know that there is a reason why I have the internet and you don’t.” Amethyst laughed under her breath. “‘Cause then the residents would just be looking up porn all the time and you guys wouldn’t be able to therapy us shit?”

“First, that’s….nowhere close to proper grammar. Second, no. It’s because you’re all still here to find coping skills and such for your own issues and disorders, and so distraction in that sense would not be helpful. This is not summer camp.” Amethyst groaned. “No shit. Summer camp’s fun.”

Peridot had heard this line an uncountable amount of times from Amethyst, and a somehow even higher yet still uncountably high amount of times from many previous residents. “...Look, we try to make it not miserable. It’s kind of the problem of being at a treatment center. Fun is our fifth priority. Maybe.”

“Whatever, dude. Anyway, there’s rumors that  _ Camp Pining Hearts: Childhood’s End  _ is going to come with a video game and graphic novel tie-in, from a supposedly leaked internal memo.” Finally, Amethyst threw away her empty soda bottle. “Oh, and thanks for the Coke.”

“...I am going to need to take a sick day. Or three. To play this game. If I’m not here in like, a year, and you have to deal with Pearl without my expert guidance, please know that I’m doing something very, very important.” Amethyst shrugged. “Dude, you do you. You’d better bring some candy in by the end of it, though. I mean the good shit. Starbursts.” 

  
“Fine. Amethyst, it’s getting increasingly hard to bend the rules for you.”


	4. Not Here

Lapis Lazuli was not here. She was not in a room without a lock. She was not surrounded by empty walls that once held drawings taped to them. She was not wearing a dress that she thought she had forgotten. She did not stay up the entire night. She did not especially stay up the entire night pacing back and forth, and drawing on paper with crayons (Pencils with erasers were considered too dangerous, for self-harming reasons) images of a child, a woman, a wave, and endless lines.

She had not covered her walls in these lines until her body couldn’t move any longer. She didn’t see the boy reflected in the drawings over and over again. A little boy with the star on his chest. She especially did not switch from mania to depression. The drawings that turned her walls into something beautiful in their obsession were just crumpled-up, now. Scattered across the floor like caltrops.

She took deep breath after deep breath, her nails scratching against her arms. She couldn’t break skin this time. Not even close. So she just tried to embrace the pain. She stood up and slammed a hand against the wall. Not good enough, but it would have to do. Wham. Wham. She started to cry, her bloodshot eyes closing and opening as she hit her arms and legs against the wall. 

The boy would have to say goodbye. His beach summer fun buddy wasn’t going to live. She didn’t know how, she didn’t know why, but the boy in his crumpled multiplicity would know that she was dead. She ran as fast as she could in the cramped room and slammed her head against the wall, but the door flew open and a short woman with a headband ran and tackled her down onto her bed.

Lapis gasped and fought, trying to punch Ruby, break her nose. “Let me die! I have nothing now! Stop making me prolong this in this hell! I just need to go!” She wasn’t thinking clearly. She never was, really. Either obsessive or destructive. Her arms were covered in scars from before CCTC, both clean and ragged, her nose had been broken and reset after she lept from a cliff that wasn’t tall enough. Her room at home was a close to perfect scale replica of the solar system, with her bed being Neptune and the rest of the major objects in her room representing planets, asteroids, comets, and the like. That was a long job, but it kept her mind busy.

Her punch was easily deflected and Ruby twisted Lapis’ wrist, jamming a hypodermic needle into the exposed vein there. “Night.” Ruby seemed genuinely discontented about this, but Lapis fell into a deep sleep. She woke up in a mock-hospital bed in the infirmary, too tired to move from the night’s events. In front of her stood Ruby’s wife, the esteemed Dr. Sapphire, an equally short woman with bangs that covered her eyes who wore a long dress and red tag with her name on it. “Ms. Lazuli, welcome to your...third time in the infirmary?”

“I can’t control it and I’m not taking your damn meds.” Lapis spat the words at Sapphire, trying to relax in the bed. “I’m not going to go and risk another attack on someone I care about due to a bad batch just because I don’t have the strength to deal with my condition on my own.”

“Lapis, your medication is fine, lithium, Latuda, and some mood stabilizers have worked for you in the past. Last summer you were very functional.” Last summer. That was when she met the kid who persuaded her to seek help. What a stupid decision that was. She still cared about the kid. Most of the time, he was enough to keep her from accepting death. Well, some of the time. 

“That’s what everyone’s said to me my entire life. This batch is going to work. It never has worked and it never will work, and guess what? It just makes things worse. I’m not going to go and deal with this crap over and over again in a vicious fucking cycle.” She kept taking deep breaths, trying to get air into her body.

“Lapis, while I understand that the incident still is in your mind, please know that you can only address that and move past it if you get your bipolar disorder in hand.” The incident. Lapis. Hostage. Bank robbery. Gunshot. Shattered mirror. For some reason, the last one became a trigger.

“Don’t bring up the incident and I’m not taking my meds.” She growled, but Sapphire responded in her usual monotone. “If you don’t take your medication I will have Ruby knock you out with the sedative and force-feed them to you. This has gone on for over two months. You are not safe.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The description of rapid-cycling bipolar disorder is pretty much straight out of my own experiences. I've suffered from (professionally diagnosed) rapid-cycling bipolar pretty much my entire life.


	5. Meeting Room 02

There were two meeting rooms at CCTC. Both of them were identical. They had large wooden tables at the center, were painted in the same beige as the rest of the complex, had no wallpaper, and had one window, from which white sunlight poured through. Both were stationed close to the front of the treatment center. At the moment, one of the meeting rooms, Meeting Room 02, was occupied. The door was not locked (few of the doors, for safety reasons, had locks at CCTC, with the exception of the entrances and exits). 

On one end of the table was Jasper Michaels, her hair long, messy, and unkempt (due partially to the lack of any way to take care of it besides showering at a treatment center, and partially to personal preference). On the other end was a woman in a business suit. Her hair was spiked in such a way that it clearly took large amounts of deliberate effort, and her appearance and posture was that of someone in absolute control. Yana Georgieva Draganova. More commonly known as YD.

The Bulgarian woman looked across the table and clasped her hands, the very air she breathed in feeling sterile. Jasper closed her eyes for a second and shifted a bit in her chair, finding the wooden construction quite uncomfortable. A treatment center resident speaking to a high-ranking executive of Diamond Arms, a major military supplier. Frankly, in her time in the Army, Jasper probably used Diamond Arms weaponry. The very conversation was a portrait of opposites. 

Jasper spoke first, eyeing YD. “Quartz sent you.” The phrase wasn’t full of animosity so much as it was a simple statement of fact. “She did.” YD nodded. “Something about her wanting you to talk to someone with similar wiring to you. I’m going to assume that you have a lack of empathy, problems controlling your rage, extremely shallow emotions…” She listed them off idly on her immaculately-manicured fingers, and Jasper responded. “Yeah, pretty much. At least you’re good at hiding it.”

“Yes, though you and I both know that it’s a struggle. It may not seem like it, but I used to be incredibly violent as a child, back in my home country.” She spoke with a slight accent. “I was born into wealth, and I went to a private school abroad, in England. My father was English and he never gave up that part of him, I guess. The school was far more focused on academics than student safety. I took advantage of this. It was about two months before people stopped looking me in the eye. Three months and they avoided me. If I asked for something, the simplest request, it would be complied. Those who disobeyed met the knife and were far more obedient within minutes.”

Jasper nodded approvingly, laughing a bit. “Yeah, I never got to do that. I went to public school, got a reputation as a psycho, and was suspended a lot. Expelled once. So.” She checked that the door was closed. It was. “You get what it’s like, though. Having to just...pretend to be like everyone else. To follow this script. To suppress the need to make them suffer for their idiocy, or for not respecting you, or whatever? It seems like you’ve gotten good at following that script. I mean, you’re outside and I’m not. Sure, I could be arrested, but I got lucky and dodged that.”

“Yes, it is a struggle.” YD’s words were measured, clearly thought through before she spoke them. This was a quality that Jasper had as well, though not quite as much. Jasper responded. “How do you do it? How are you the rich executive in the arms industry and I’m just a pissed-off vet?” YD shrugged. “Well, some of us have more rage in us than others, and a lot of it is upbringing. My family was decent enough.” Jasper’s family weren’t monsters, but they were neglectful, to be sure. Her father used to share whiskey with her after ninth grade basketball games and pretty much every Friday, starting from her thirteenth birthday. Mother was a doctor, and so was only home very late at night. One stressed parent with tendencies to ignore his sociopath daughter and one outright absent parent led to some issues.

Jasper’s nose wrinkled up at the assertion that some people just had more rage than others. “Are...Are you insulting me?” She cracked her knuckles, more out of force of habit than anything. “Of course I’m not insulting you. It’s just fact. We’re all different. You and I are different people. We just have some similarities.” Jasper took this as a personal offense, and growled a bit under her breath. “How do you get out your rage, then? I know you have some. Everyone does. Especially people like us.” Jasper thought for a second about how she was being oddly polite, but decided that YD was probably worth an iota of her respect. She could respect success. “What are your tactics?”

“I play games. Chess. Board games. Mostly online, though I meet up with friends for poker every week.” ‘Friends’ was, of course, a relative term. YD had no affection for them, but she tolerated them. “I also have a private therapist, and I vent my...concerns about life to her. That, and I have a comfortable work environment, by which I mean that everyone I work with is terrified of me. That is achieved through threats of firing and slashing budgets every so often. I go through with it, just to show that I’m serious. That way, I don’t have to deal with stressors.”

Jasper thought about those for a second. “They seem pretty specific to your life. All I’ve found is inflicting pain, playing mind games with people, trying to hurt people who annoy or insult me psychologically, that kind of thing. Games and threats just don’t do it for me.” YD shrugged again. “Everyone has their coping skills. I would direct you to talk to Dr. Quartz about it, but honestly she’s...naive.”

“Naive?” Jasper tilted her head a bit, and YD responded. “Naive. She’s alright at treating nearly any other kind of mental disorder, but something about sociopathy she just isn’t able to fully comprehend. It’s as though she can’t wrap her head around the idea that we think differently. She always was sentimental, though.” Jasper laughed under her breath. “More like a pompous bitch.” YD smirked a bit at that, clearly in her element in a quiet room with someone she could relate to. “That is a much better way to put it.”


	6. Question

**This is actually a question for the readers.**

**We haven't gotten to Pearl, yet, but I honestly haven't felt up to writing her. Other than her, now that you know a bit about each character, who would you like to see in the next few chapters?**

**Also, commenting in the last few chapters would be lovely, if anyone has any thoughts.**


	7. Amethyst

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There was a four-way tie, so it'll be an Amethyst chapter, then one for Pearl (Yes, I know that some of you are very interested in her in this AU), one for Peridot (I'm excited for that one), and one for Lapis.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize at any issues with the names of the Chinese characters here. I did try as hard as I could to get that all down, but if I made some mistake, I'm sorry.

**J** **u l y 10, 2015**

Amethyst Lianne Lin never liked Garden Canyon. Two days ago, it had been her eighteenth birthday. She'd gotten excited about getting to leave the house, before realizing that she had nowhere to go. It wasn't as if the Universe family was ready to adopt a new child. So, she walked with her little sisters through the massive Garden Canyon. Caitlin and Marie Lin were both about four, and they wore matching overalls. Matching goddamn overalls. Just like her parents to dress them like that. Lin Peng and Lin Jingfei were sentimental that way. 

Amethyst, as the names of her and her sisters might suggest, grew up in an Americanized family. Both Peng and Jingfei were raised by strict parents, as first-generation children, though the specifics of their parent's rigidity were, of course, somewhat different. Nobody lives the same life. The two ran in the opposite direction, both considering at times changing their names before rejecting the idea. It was good to assimilate (they both had had rocks thrown at them for failing to do so as children), but changing one's name? If they could avoid it, they wouldn't, and luckily, they didn't need to.

So Amethyst, clad in an oversized red flannel shirt covered in stains, her whole body walking with a slump, earbuds in her ears. She pulled one out and turned to her much taller mother. She had gotten the short gene from Peng, it seemed. "Hey, guys. I'm going to go and get lost for a while. Meet you back at the information booth, okay?" Jingfei nodded, still looking at the twins. "Oh. Of course. See you there when we're done." 

**_September 1, 2010_ **

_Amethyst looked to her mother, who was chatting with Peng about something. "Peng, I really do think that if we're going to go and get the guest bedroom ready to handle twins, we should consider ordering at least some things online." He turned to Jingfei and shook his head as the three walked along the dirt paths of the verdant canyon. It was a tradition at this point. Garden Canyon was where they first met, and Jingfei and Peng never really stopped being young lovers. "Sweetie, I'll think about it."_

_"Mom, I'm going to get lost. See you at the information booth." Amethyst then started to walk the other way, and her parents continued their path down the winding, rocky trail. Amethyst sighed and got moving quicker, just to put distance between her and her parents. This wasn't the first time that Peng and Jingfei talked about the twins. Sometimes it was about what to name them. Sometimes it was about renovating the guest bedroom. Sometimes it was about how they'd divide time (Peng usually ended up taking most of that blow). To Amethyst, though? It just looked like she was being replaced. Yeah, it was cliché, but when your parents didn't really talk to you much..._

**_June 23, 2012_ **

_She was right the whole time. She was being replaced. It had been two years, and while her parents had stopped caring about her once she started to develop depression due to schoolyard bullying, stress, and, let's be honest, the consistent and uncaring treatment of her family, all that mattered were Peng and Jingfei's love life and the twins. The twins were doted on from every hour of the day, and often while the parents dated or dealt with the twins she'd find herself in Greg's garage, watching an 80's sitcom with him for hours on end. "You people have too much money!" The little butler on the TV exclaimed, and Amethyst laughed a bit. "Don't worry, Ame. Once the kids are older, they'll care about you again..." Steven sat next to her, and didn't seem particularly convinced._

**_August 3, 2014_ **

_There they were, at Garden Canyon. Ever since 2011, Amethyst carried a switchblade in her coat pocket, mostly so that when she "got lost" in the canyon she'd have something to do. It was a way to cope. The twins raced ahead of the parents, and Amethyst stayed behind, wishing she had something to drink. She watched Peng and Jingfei run after them. No. Finally, today she'd say something. She sprinted and gathered herself, stopping in front of both the twins and the parents, quite easily. For someone as short as she was, she was a star track runner. Not that they cared._

_"You know what? I'm tired of being treated like a monster, and I think I know why. It's because you wanna have this perfect fifties family, and I never was the kid you wanted, so you just had two more and stopped caring about me. That's why you barely talk when I talk to you, that's why I drink with Lapis after school, that's why. I'm the bad child." Peng and Jingfei, stopped, seeming genuinely shaken at that. Probably out of pure fear at Amethyst's demeanor, the twins slowed down as well, finally stopping to watch her. Jingfei finally responded. "...Amethyst...No...We've just been dealing with the twins, and you're so much more independent than they are. You're seventeen, now. You've taken care of yourself for years, and you're making a scene. Look, everyone's staring at you. If you need to go, you can, but don't blame your father or me for taking care of two four-year-olds."_

_Amethyst thought that they'd listen. She really did. She'd hoped and hoped against hope that she might be able to get through to them. However, she just took as deep a breath as she could, teared up a little, and returned to the cave a ways away from the usual spots the family liked to visit in the canyon. Her cave. She crawled into it and sat in the black expanse, and drew her pocketknife. Honestly, this was probably a better use of her time than trying to talk to them._

**J** **u l y 10, 2015**

Back in the present, Amethyst found herself nearly alone. Her cave was surrounded by nearly nobody, as the place was hard to get to and very, very dirty. It also lacked the scenic vegetation that gave Garden Canyon its name. She started to try and wriggle into her cave, before she heard a squeaky, shrill voice. "Hey! Clod! What are you doing?" The voice didn't really sound hostile, mostly because of the fact that "clod" is kind of a silly word no matter the context, and so Amethyst stopped and turned. Steven stood there, next to a woman in green a bit taller than him, who gazed at her through yellow-tinted glasses.

"Who are you, and what the fuck makes you think that you get to be part of my life?" She exclaimed, though it was as defeated as it was angry. The yellow-and-green woman stepped back a bit, but responded. "My name is Peridot Brown. I'm a staff member at the Crystal Cliffs Treatment Center, and a friend of Steven's. Your parents told Greg after your birthday that you were cutting yourself, mostly in annoyance, he said that you should seek help, they said that you'd never go for it, but Steven asked me to talk to you, and he said that you would be here. Amethyst seemed a bit annoyed that perhaps someone had been watching her in her cave, but that was really a secondary feeling. "They...didn't even think I..." While she wouldn't institutionalize herself normally, being told that her parents assumed she was hopeless was kind of, well, painful. She looked to Steven. "Steven, she's on the level? This isn't like, an organ harvesting operation?"

"Oh, yeah! Pearl goes to the CCTC when she's doing really badly, and Lapis just checked in." That was probably a good thing. Even Amethyst knew that Lapis was a danger to herself. It was pretty obvious. "Look, I can check out whenever I want?" Peridot nodded. "Yes, that is kind of how being an adult works." So her choices were her douchebag and bitch of a mother and father, or institutionalization. She decided to go all in. "You know what? Fuck it. Steven, I trust you, let's just do this already before I change my mind."

 


	8. Rampancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After this is a Peridot viewpoint chapter, then Lapis.

Peridot, Dr. Sapphire and Pearl sat in a small room, each on a red beanbag chair. Pearl wore her usual outfit, immaculate as always, Peridot had a _Halo 2_ t-shirt on, and Dr. Sapphire's usual 19th century dress sat on her body. "So, it's kind of like AI rampancy?" Pearl had no idea what Peridot had just said, nor what she meant. "AI rampancy? You're not comparing obsessive-compulsive disorder to some science fiction thing, are you?" She seemed pretty offended by the idea, as well she should. Peridot eventually picked up on Pearl's facial cues and responded quickly. "No, no! I mean that in  _Halo,_ AI sometimes go into rampancy, which is their form of mental illness, and that it's described by Dr. Halsey as, more or less, when you think so hard you forget to breathe."

"Think so hard you forget to breathe..." She toyed around with the description in her head. It wasn't a perfect way of describing the obsessional component of OCD, not by a long shot, and it was certainly reductionist, but it also had a certain accuracy and charming simplicity. "Yes, that is a way to describe it. I don't suppose that you have some connection to a video game I haven't and will never play to describe the rest of my psychological profile?" She said this with dripping sarcasm. There was a reason why Peridot normally worked the front desk instead of sitting in on check-ins.

"What? No. I just have a question for you, if Dr. Sapphire will let me ask it." Peridot's voice was less confrontational and more actually inquisitive, here, so Pearl didn't comment on the statement itself. "Feel free." Dr. Sapphire's voice echoed a bit in the small room. Peridot looked to Pearl. "You're kind of a regular patient here, you've been here for, maybe, two months for this latest stay, and you never get to know anyone here, even people who you know outside of the center, like me or Amethyst. Why's that?"

"I don't really "do" friendships. Lapis tried to twist the knife while I was depressed, Jasper went after Rose, Amethyst has been avoiding me for weeks after the incident, and I know that means something, you keep asking me these questions, Dr. Sapphire asked about my family, Ruby tackled me and knocked me out with a syringe three weeks ago, Greg stole Rose from me, Steven sided with Greg, and so that means that the only person I have at this point is Rose herself, and she isn't really a friend. I usually think of her as my charge. I survive throughout the day, I practice in my room every night at exactly 7:30 so I'll be ready if someone comes after her. Greg isn't good enough for her. I'm not good enough for her, either. Not even close. I admit it, though. I don't pretend that-"

"Pearl, you're starting to spiral downwards. Please take some deep breaths." Dr. Sapphire requested, and Pearl did so. "Someday, she's going to take me close and tell me that I was the only one loyal to her after the rest of the world betrayed and insulted the both of us." Peridot scooted back a bit, toying with her name tag. "Hey, uh, what if she doesn't? What if Dr. Quartz and Greg stay together pretty much forever? They have chemistry. I've seen them outside the center. You haven-" She was quickly interrupted by Pearl, who seemed very disturbed by that indeed for a brief second. "No. It can't be that special. The man runs a car wash." She looked at a clock positioned high on one of the walls of the room, near the window made of bulletproof glass (for safety), and read that it was 7:30, the end of her check-in and the beginning of her free time in her room.

For her, that meant practicing and preparing for war. In the same way, every time. To stave off oblivion, to avoid some great disaster, she did this every day, at the same time. Pearl, alone once more (as she always was) left the room and walked to her room, which was about half again the size of a college dorm and organized in perfect bilateral symmetry. The bed was made perfectly evenly, and sat in the middle of the room, pressed against the back wall. Two shelves, one on each side of the bed, each covered in books. One book, the one she was reading, placed directly in the middle of the bed.  _Romance of the Three Kingdoms._ Amethyst, worthless, spiteful Amethyst, had given it to her. Apparently she had gotten it at a secondhand shop because her parents would be annoyed by one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature due to their disdain for "tradition", but she had of course found it incredibly dull, and gave it to Pearl to read. A memento from a time when she thought she could trust the world. She had those times. They always ended. 

She took the large pillow from the head of her bed and put it on her windowsill, getting into a fighting stance as she threw a quick jab, which hit the pillow harmlessly. Another jab, this time with her other hand. Same result. She did this every night, in the exact same way. Without this routine, the world would collapse. Part of her thought that the medication might not be working as well as they hoped, part of her thought that it didn't matter. Like Aztec sacrifices pushing forward the end of days, her routines ensured that nothing bad would happen.

She threw two haymakers, one after the other, eventually falling into something of a rhythm, her body beginning to sweat and her muscles starting to tire a bit. It was time that she went to the real training. She carefully placed the pillow back in its perfect spot, and removed her shoes, placing them at the center of the foot of the bed. Then she begun to kick at the metal lattice that made up the front of her bed from the sides, each side kick hitting hard and causing significantly more pain to the front of her feet than the previous kick. It made little sound, given how heavy and stationary the front of the bed was, and so it alerted no staff to her actions. " _Tsh!"_ She exhaled after every strike.

_Thwap. Tsh! Switch sides._

_Thwap. Tsh! Switch sides._

_Thwap. Tsh! Switch._

_Thwap. Tsh! Switch._

Her face contorted into a growl as she hit with more ferocity, starting to outright ignore the pain in her feet, the bruising beginning to develop. She'd deal with that once she woke up. This, at the very least, helped her feel alive. Once she was too tired to continue, she tucked into her bed fully clothed and realized, as she did every night, that she had battered and bruised feet that she would have to deal with, that she had no friends but a therapist she could barely interact with on a human level, and that eventually one of the medical technicians on staff would realize her method of self-harm, and her all-important routine would be finished. She went to sleep and prepared to wake up and redo the same cycle. Anything for Rose.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Borderline Personality Disorder was really new to me, and so I've done some research, but even then, I hope I got everything good enough. 
> 
> Also, the hospital I stayed at actually used bulletproof glass for the windows.


	9. Beatdown + Into the Ocean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We've seen some of the residents at their better moments, safe, secure, and with a decent support network.

**Beatdown**

 

"Blue, mind coming with me to the garage? I've got something to show you. A new mountain bike. It's pretty awesome." The other figure looks at you and responds. "...Uh, sure."

* * *

She's breaking, now. The garage is cold and lifeless. A soldier and a ballerina in blue. You're the soldier, in fatigues drenched in sweat. The ballerina in blue isn't to far from you, and you ball your hand into a fist and begin to pummel her face. She squirms, but your arm holds her against the wall. She's tiny, Jasper. Like a glass figurine. The garage door is locked. You hit her again, your fist smashing her nose, blood dripping from her beak-like face onto her perfect little fucking outfit.

Not enough. You step back a bit, she tries to run, doesn't get far, your palm smashes into the front of her neck, and you grab it, choking her like a boa constrictor. Your other fist balls up and you begin to hit the front of her face with the side of your hand as hard as you can, snot, blood, and tears mixing between her breasts. You claw at her eyes with the free hand, and she closes them, begging. You don't hear what she says.

More strikes, more clawing at her eyes, but you don't want her dead. This? This is catharsis. Eventually you stop beating her face into mush and let go of her neck, clocking her with a haymaker to keep her from running. She drops to the concrete. Then you walk, slowly, purposefully, your whole body drenched in sweat and rage, and pick up a straight tire iron, the metal pipe cold in your hands. You lift her limp body up and bring her through the garage door to the basement, pulling her onto a couch. It's easy. She's so tiny, and you...aren't.

You raise the tire iron and begin to smash, hitting her side slowly, breathing as you do it. Blue here was once an acquaintance of yours. She grew to trust the emotionally blank soldier. Perhaps even love her. You don't care. Right now, you're just letting the metal pipe collide with the thin toothpick arms of the ballerina, her face a bloody mess and her limbs bruised, broken, and a horrible mess against her chest.

So you flip her over like a rag doll and start to whack her spine. You're not trying to break it. That would require intent to do anything. The sound of metal hitting her, however, is just so...not sweet. It's like you're eating. You haven't eaten for years. Not since the Army. You've starved- WHAM-yourself. Tolerated this bull-WHAM-shit. The tire iron collides with her body, from her shoulder-blades to her spine. 

You keep her like this, knocking her out with chokeholds or just blunt-force trauma, for about a night or so. You burn her, you wound her, you nearly break her bones. When she wakes up, you tell her that it was all a test of her love, or some crock of shit. You go through the tedious process of nursing her for a week, and you offer to institutionalize yourself if she doesn't tell anyone what actually happened. Because you care about her. And want to change. What a joke. She eagerly nods, as Blue has never been particularly good at seeing the difference between her gothic romance and tragic plays, and real life. You'll have to do this again, sometime.

 

 

**Into the Ocean**

 

 

You are walking across the beach like a specter in a long wool coat. The coat is covered in pockets, it is an old coat. It is brownish, and fraying at points, but it holds your cargo fine. Rocks collected over the course of a week, from the sides of streets, from the beach itself. Each pocket stuffed, the coat pulling you downward to the sand. But you walk.

You feel yourself glide across the sand, a spectacle. It is certainly strange, to be sure, but this world is one you are not going to think about. You are a specter in a long wool coat. The sand sits between your boots as you walk, no doubt leaving footprints that you do not care about. Yes, at times you do care very much about footprints. Those are different times. At any rate, you walk.

The sun is rising, today, specter. The Delmarva heat is oppressive in the long wool coat full of rocks. It is not comfortable. Like being baked alive in a ancient blanket. You turn your head and see the sunlight reflect off of the water. It's hard to watch, it's bright, but it is there, and the sky is alight in orange, like an all-consuming flame. So you observe in your long wool coat. You walk.

Finally, you are far away. Only one or two observers. One man with a golden goatee, a woman with braids. They are of no consequence. You pivot on your feet to face the water, specter, and you begin to walk into the ocean. The water pools around the front of your boots, and as you step, the bottom of your coat starts to become cold, uncomfortable, and wet. You walk.

You move forward further, cold water soaking your baggy pants and climbing up your body. It's at your knees now. A wave hits your face. You sputter, the salt hitting your face and entering your mouth, but you do not stop. The specter glides down the beach, through the water, until eventually it gets deeper, and deeper, and the rocks pull you down. Into the ocean you fall in a long wool coat.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This was honestly just an experiment. I'm curious to see what people think, if anything.


End file.
